Leslie Cuyjet – Butter Pecan Pod

We’re back in the New Year and we’re here to talk about dieting. Darryl and Kelly discuss their own experience with diets, the bold choice to take up space, and the different ways it affects men and women.

We also got the chance to talk with our friend Leslie Cuyjet a Louisville KY native and professional dancer based in New York City. We discuss Leslie’s work, relationship to diets, and how things are changing in the world of dance as the BLM movement continues. Leslie brings her perspective on body image as a black woman whose own body is a main component of their work.

On a personal note, I wanted to include this picture of Darryl and me that we had taken when we were making the website. When I reviewed the pictures, I felt devastated. To me, I looked bigger than I felt and didn’t like the way my stomach pushed out over my jeans. But since then (this may be surprising) I have stopped trying to lose weight. I have put my scale away, stopped counting calories, and also threw away those jeans. Not only were these all things that were not serving my health, I’ve realized that the way I look at my own body is a practice in fat phobia, and I was approaching my wellness in a way that looked at my own body as evil.

This is all to say that it takes time and patience to move beyond the cultural ideas that fat is bad and dieting for weight loss is good. Be kind to yourself, send love to those parts of your body that you often hate, and maybe go outside for some fresh air. Treat yourself with love and kindness as we move into this New Year. Cheers!

Winter Break

Happy 2021! We have been soaking up some much needed vacation time with our families and looking forward to big things in the next year. We’ve spent the past two weeks eating all the food, bingeing all the TV, and sleeping in past 7AM (we still have kids so let’s be reasonable).

This year, we have some major subjects to cover including bourbon, school lunch, Juneteenth, mac n’ cheese, and much more. We’re going to start off the year talking about dieting and weight loss, and the racist root of this awful, made-up construct. We also had the chance to have a long overdue phone call with our good friend Leslie Cuyjet about body image in the competitive field of dance. We’ll be recording next week, and the first show of the year will be posted January 19th.

If you can’t wait until then to hear all of the empowering and brain-changing things we’re going to discuss, do yourself a favor and stop dieting now. If you want to do something for your body, take it outside for some fresh air, feed it some power food, and let it rest.